So she moved toward the Hell-Bards. Zander had pried himself free of the railing and turned his attention to Caden and Lev. Though none of them stood, they were at least upright and slightly more relaxed. After finding an empty patch of balustrade and grabbing hold with a white-knuckled grip, she gazed down, into the gray, storm-swept expanse.
She had never flown this high before. In fact, the one time she had been in the air had been with Merik Nihar. They’d coasted over a lucent sea, so close to the water she had seen individual waves and the moon’s glow upon each.
Now, the Eridysi flew so high that what few landmarks Safi glimpsed within the storm—rivers like silver thread and lakes like shadowy mirrors—were too far, too small. They didn’t feel real.
With a sigh, Safi pushed away thoughts of Merik. He was alive somewhere, and one day she would find him again. When the world was no longer a shitstorm clogging a storm drain. When Iseult was safe. When Uncle Eron was safe. When her Hell-Bard friends were safe and she was safe too.
Gazing down at a brief stretch of logging camps layered in white, Safi dug deep inside herself. The remnants of the Loom were still in there, its hold still cinched around her bones. The altitude’s cold might make the doom harder to tease out, but it lurked all the same. The dark magic, the vast power of control—they remained clamped around her heart.
Another peek beneath her gloves. Like a patch of untreated frostbite still exposed to the blizzard air, the darkness had grown across her skin. Shadows wriggled, and eventually there would be no stopping this. But she had not reached that point yet. She would not stop. She could not stop.
Her fingers moved to her pocket, where she gripped the Threadstones tight. She could almost pretend they were warm to the touch. She could almost pretend they made the Hell-Bard Loom weaken, her own heart and colors booming strong.
I’m coming, Iz, she told the horizon. I’m coming.
FORTY-ONE
“You have lost the diary and the Threadstones.” Corlant peered down at Iseult. So tall, his head almost reached the tent’s domed ceiling. And so near, Iseult had to crane her neck to meet his lopsided gaze.
Her mother had returned to her shadow, head bent, and a third person had joined them: Evrane, her Threads alight with smokelike birds and cruel curiosity. But there was fear in there too, rooted at the heart of every other feeling. Fear of Corlant, Iseult assumed. The false monk certainly shot wary glances his way every few moments while she, like Gretchya, tucked herself into a shadow.
Corlant scratched at his bindings. Fresher now, no longer stained with blood—though a patch of yellow did ooze outward. Slick in the weak firelight.
“It would seem you are an agent of chaos, Iseult. Years I held both stones and diary, then you ruined it in an instant, like one of Trickster’s own.”
Iseult blinked slowly. “I belong to no gods.”
He chuckled. “If only you knew how true that was, Dark-Giver.” His Threads flared with familiar amusement, and a chill slid down Iseult’s spine. It had been strange enough to have Aeduan call her that title. It was worse when Corlant said it. For him, it was a crooned endearment. Something that meant more than the sum of its two words.
She angled away from him. Her hands hurt. She wanted to sit, wanted to stop straining her neck. And above all, she wanted Corlant to see she wasn’t afraid of him. At her cot, she sank down. Corlant followed, but did not sit—this man who had so easily defeated her magic. So easily frozen her alive from the inside out and who was somehow related to her by blood.
She supposed she did have his nose.
“Why do you want the Threadstones?” she asked, staring at the bandages on her hands. She had taken his sight; he had taken her touch.
“You stole the diary but did not read it?” His Threads shimmered with incredulity. Iseult knew if she glanced up, the trenches on his forehead would be deep.
“I didn’t have time. Not with your monster hunting me.”
“Ah. Then just think of what the Nubrevnans say: Why do you hold a razor in one hand? So men know that I am sharp as any edge. And why do you hold broken glass in the other? So men remember that I am always watching.” Another chuckle, but this time his Threads glinted with amusement turned inward. As if he’d made a joke only he could understand. “The Fury spent so long searching for the old tools, Iseult, but he had no idea what the Rook King had done. And the Rook King has no idea what I have done.”
“And what is that?”
“We take power as we need it, and no one can resist.” He directed those words toward Gretchya’s corner. Iseult did not look back. “It is the power of Midne.”
“It sounds more like the power of Portia.”
Now full-throated surprise flashed over Corlant’s Threads, and before Iseult could pull away, he had dropped to a seat beside her. He smelled of old blood and pine trees. “So you did read the diary. Where is it now?”
“Lost in the Solfatarra,” she lied. He was so close. Cloying in his closeness, overwhelming in his Threads. The yellow stain where his eye had been now stank. Fetid, rotting—it was not healing well.
“Luckily for you,” he said, “I recall most of it. There is much you can learn from me.”
“From you,” Iseult countered, using the moment to launch back to her feet. “Or from Eridysi, who actually wrote it?” She stared down at him, briefly taller.
And he smiled, though it did not reach his eye. “Your mother used to have a sharp tongue too, Iseult. It did not last.”
“And I am not my mother.”
“A good thing, for she was too weak to serve my purpose in the end.” Still sitting, he waved to Evrane. While the monk approached, Iseult finally glanced at her mother’s shadow.
Gretchya did not lift her head. She was made of stone. A stasis statue, as she’d always been.
Evrane reached Corlant and offered him a small white cloth, folded over something that Corlant quickly withdrew: the noose off a Hell-Bard. The one that had first connected Iseult to Corlant several days before. He could touch it without being sucked in. He could hold it to the light and watch it glitter, no fear of its frozen grasp.
“You will take this,” he said, lone eye pinned to Iseult’s face. “And together we will enter the Loom.”
“Why?”
“Because there is work to be done and Threadstones to be found.”
Before Iseult could react, before she could back away and try to flee, Corlant’s fingers lashed out and gripped her wrist. Then he shoved the gold against her hand, warm from Evrane’s pocket, and the world of the living fell away.
* * *
It started with Caden. They were an hour into their flight when he floundered away from the railing, a choke garbling from his throat. Then he was on all fours and gasping for air. Black lines crawled across his face.
Safi dropped to his side in an instant. “Caden.” She tried to haul him upright. “Caden, Caden.”
He pawed her away, head shaking. “He … wants you.” His eyes screwed shut. “He wants me to bring—”
Lev screamed. She fell to the deck, and when Safi whipped toward her, she found veins of shadow crawling beneath the woman’s skin. They were like Safi’s, but wilder. More deadly and spreading fast. Only Zander seemed untouched as he scrabbled toward Lev.